Pakistan getting madrases under control

Over half of the nation's Islamic schools have registered, agreed to audits and inspections

James Palmer, Chronicle Foreign Service

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 4, 2008

Faced with ongoing criticism that some of the nation's 20,000 Islamic schools remain terrorist breeding grounds for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, the Pakistani government is trying to reform the institutions known as madrassas.

Since 2002, the state has offered financial incentives to madrassas that voluntarily register and agree to monitoring of curriculum, mandatory audits and impromptu inspections.

Some 13,000 madrassas have registered so far, and only two have lost state certification in the past 18 months, according to the Ittihad Tanzeemat Madaris Deenia, an independent organization that acts as an intermediary between government and Islamic schools. The ITMD has the power to terminate state funding if a madrassa fails to make the obligatory reforms.

Even though critics say madrassas still steer the underprivileged into a life of Islamic militancy, they agree that state oversight is an important step to root out what former Secretary of State Colin Powell once called breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists."

And many madrassa administrators and teachers say they are grooming students not for the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq but for the job market in an increasingly global economy. As many as 5,000 madrassas now have broader academic offerings in their curriculum.

Math and English

Since 1990, the Razooia madrassa, which was established in 1963, has introduced math, science, history and English into its fifth- to 12th-grade curriculum. The school registered with Pakistan's education ministry in 2004 and receives nominal government support - basically enough just to buy books.

"The aim of most students is to get a solid education, attend university and get a good job to support their families," said Hafil Faisal, an ITMD administrator.

Since Pakistan's partition from India in 1947, the number of madrassas has grown from about 140 to 20,000, with an estimated 2 million students, according to the ITMD. After 1979, madrassas multiplied exponentially as foreign funding streamed into the country to combat the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. Large amounts of money were dispatched to Islamic schools, where students were trained by mujahedeen fighters to battle Soviet soldiers.

Most analysts agree that many members of Afghanistan's Taliban government, who were ousted in 2001 by the U.S.-led invasion, attended madrassas in Pakistan. Militants used the schools to convert young students to extremist views, these same analysts say. A small percentage of students and alumni of madrassas in Pakistan and abroad are linked to militant organizations, according to a 2007 study by the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan group funded by the U.S. Congress.

But for the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, madrassas are a potential vehicle out of poverty in a nation with a literacy rate of only 50 percent. Unlike public schools, these seminaries provide free books, uniforms, and room and board to students whose parents cannot afford to send their children to school.

The Razooia school operates six days a week, 12 months a year except during the holy month of Ramadan. Islamic studies are taught between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. in which students are required to memorize verses from the Quran and study Islamic history. In the afternoon, they take such academic courses as math, biology, chemistry, physics, history, Urdu, English, Arabic and computer science. Students striving for higher education can take bachelor-level and graduate courses in association with Punjab University, a public institution in Lahore.

"The students are never idle," Shujah Amer Rashid, a private businessman and a madrassa board member said. "This is our way of keeping them from trouble."

Studying for exam

On a recent visit, a reporter watched a group of some 80 barefoot students study for an exam while sitting on a carpeted floor inside a mosque attached to the school. In another room, students in prayer caps and shawal kameezes, a traditional two-piece, loose-fitting garment, sat behind desktop computers and followed instructions on an overhead projector.

In a nearby lab, a science instructor conducted an experiment with a blue fluid dripping into a beaker that seemed to transfix his young charges.

Mahfooz Asalam, 18, is a high school senior from Okara, a village of 5,000 less than 10 miles from Lahore. He says his father struggles to support his family of seven on an annual income of about $3,200 - farming corn, wheat and sugarcane. Asalam wants to eventually earn a master's degree in economics from Punjab University.

"My family is poor," Asalam said. "But one day, God willing, I will be able to help them."

Nearly all of Razooia's 19 instructors are madrassa graduates, who earn about $100 monthly along with room and board.

"The pupils here are very motivated," said science instructor Bashir Ahmed, 26. "They're required to learn the Quran by heart in the morning, and this is the same way they take to their academic studies in the afternoon."

Razooia officials, however, are mindful of the potential influence of extremists. At the risk of stifling self-expression, school policy prohibits political discussions and forbid students from attending outside protests. But they do promote sporting events against other madrassas in a nearby park.

"We're concerned about them socializing enough," said Rashid, the school board member. "We want them to enjoy themselves outside of the mosque and classroom."